Assassination of John F. Kennedy
The Kennedy assassination refers to the murder of the American President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963.
The assassination
The Master mentally programmed UNIT Private Francis Cleary and sent him from the near future to prevent the assassination. This would change history and possibly enable the Cuban Missile Crisis to proceed in a way that would lead to a nuclear war. James Stevens, a journalist obsessed with the assassination attempt, went to 1963 using a time ring to stop Cleary. Stevens discovered the actual gunman who had killed Kennedy and recognised him as an older version of Stevens himself, travelling back from the future a second time. In order to preserve the course of history, in 1996, after writing a book revealing the truth, he used the time ring again to carry out the assassination (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy).
References
- The Third Doctor mentioned to James Stevens in a telephone call that the prevention of the assassination would cause an historical embolism, which would result in the Doctor himself being erased from existence. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
- The Seventh Doctor implied to Ace that the proximity of Nemesis to Earth had caused or influenced the assassination. (TV: Silver Nemesis)
- A contemporary photo found by Clive Finch seemed to show the Ninth Doctor as a spectator to the assassination (TV: Rose, WEB: Who is Doctor Who?).
- Darius Pike showed K9, Starkey and Gryffen an issue of the Daily Standard, with the latest news on the Kennedy assassination as the headline. (TV: The Cambridge Spy)
- Ian Chesterton pondered the possibility of Russian invasion during the turmoil after Kennedy's death. (AUDIO: 1963)
- The crew of the Teselecta stated that the Kennedy assassination was an example of how time could be rewritten, presumably referencing some aspect of this event. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Behind the scenes
The assassination and Doctor Who
The première of Doctor Who on 23 November 1963 happened just one day after the Kennedy assassination, a fact frequently mentioned in media overviews and non-fiction literature on Doctor Who.
A persistent, but untrue, rumour states that Doctor Who had been scheduled to première on 22 November but was postponed due to news coverage of the assassination. In fact, the premiere had always been scheduled for 23 November.[1]
The Kennedy assassination happened during the recording of an episode of The Daleks, interrupting shooting as the cast and crews learned of the news. A common rumour states that news coverage of the killing caused the interruption of the normal television schedule, too, so that on 23rd November, 1963, one day after the assassination, the first episode of the first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, aired five minutes late; however it actually went out only ninety seconds later than scheduled. As the episode was not seen in parts of the country due to a power outage, it was rebroadcast the following week; it is often stated that it was replayed due to the assassination coverage, but this too has been debunked.
During the 1988 silver anniversary season, the assassination is specifically mentioned in Silver Nemesis, and the Remembrance of the Daleks includes the time ot of the assassination (12:30, U.S. central time; 18:30 in Britain).[1]
The non-canonical thirtieth anniversary special, Dimensions in Time, which took place on 23 November in 1973, 1993 and 2013, includes a 1973 mention of the assassination having occurred ten years earlier.
When the series was revived in 2005, the première episode, Rose, featured a photograph of the Ninth Doctor standing mere feet from Kennedy, waiting to watch him be shot an instant later.
The companion introduced as Doctor Who approaches the golden anniversary the assassination and, the following day, the series' première, shares her surname with Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The first version of her to be shown had been one of the two brief survivors of the Alaska’s crash, the other being named Harvey.
Possibly a coincidence, a supporting character throughout the 2010 Torchwood series, Miracle Day, was a serial killer also named Oswald.
Other references
- In Doctor Who and the Crusaders, a philosophical discussion at the beginning of the book makes note of the Kennedy assassination.
- The Seventh Doctor admits in Original Sin "that he was doing something" around the time of the Kennedy assassination, referencing the premiere of Doctor Who and/or his and Ace's battle against the Daleks at 76 Totter's Lane and the Coal Hill School on those two days. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- The JFK assassination was referenced in TV: Dimensions in Time.
- ↑ The Doctor and Ace arrive during the daytime on an initially unspecified date in 1963. After fighting Daleks at 76 Totter's Lane and investigating the Coal Hill School basement, Ace takes a room for the night. The day of the week is given, and the date implied the following day when an announcer states, "This is BBC television. The time is quarter past five, and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series, Do-]]. The duo thus arrived at least a few hours before 18:30 on the 22nd.
